Michigan Kicker Recruiting

I came across this Article on K Matt Goudis (paywall article) who committed to Boise State and then visited Ann Arbor a few weeks back. Despite paywall issues, the header says a lot. Right now it looks like Goudis is remaining a Bronco despite our interest. I guess it's possible to read more into what he says -- especially the "right now" part. But I don't see it happening. Hopefully Gibbons can still develop into a decent kicker. Who knows at this point.

Not to mention he basically kicked either straight on or from the left hash every time....he kicked once near the right hash but it wasn't a far kick. Just saying, during a game you wont always be able to kick from the left.

Aren't the current kickers supposed to have done well in practice, too? Not to say that Meram isn't clutch, because he certainly is. But this is alone in the practice facility, and only the ones he made.

Ugh. RR needs to focus his recruiting muscles on our soccer team and find the guy with the strongest leg and see what happens. If our soccer team is the best in the BigTen (hopefully the country) then I'm sure we have multiple candidates.

I thought the next quote by Goudis in that article was most telling. I'm looking forward to a time, hopefully in the near future, when our coach, hopefully Rich Rod, has some job security. Recruits are obviously affected by the unknown:

“The coaching staff at Michigan was great, but you know, with Michigan, they could be gone when I get there,” Goudis said. “That was a major factor for me..."

I'm a junior in high school and Goudis is in my AP Stat class, and after talking to him about it, i would say he is still considering Michigan. He thinks the team is on the rise and that denard is amazing, but he said he didn't like Ann Arbor or the cold too much. He likes that Boise is winning, so i would say a strong finish by michigan would go a long way with him.

So I was checking out the Sarasota Gun club, specifically their sporting clays range and Dan's coach and brother was working the range. I was wearing my new Michigan golf shirt (I know, strange choice to wear at the range but it was Saturday). We started chatting about his brother Dan.

Florida

Urban Meyer talked with Dan personally when he was visiting a Riverview game to see a RB. Meyer said Florida would "grey shirt" him (I'm not quite sure what that is) but his brother's understanding is that Dan would not start his Freshman year. This is not what Dan wants, his brother says he wants to play right away.

Ohio State

OSU has contacted the family but they don't consider it an official or serious effort on OSU's part. They are VERY excited about OSU due to the past history OSU has with putting kickers in the NFL. BUT...OSU is ONLY talking to the family and Dan's brother didn't think this was proper.

Service Academies

He has offers in hand for all of them. He is not going to a service academy.

Michigan

This is all from Dan's brother and coach. Michigan has contacted the coaching staff and asked for film. Film has been sent. Michigan asked for film on FG from the ground (not a tee) and they provided that including a 60 yarder that was good (from a kicking camp). "Michigan is recruiting the right way", according to the brother, Michigan is not making promises or talking shit to Dan they are talking to coaches and have indicated that if the film looks good and Dan is interested an offer might be coming. One negative for Michigan is that they do not have a kicking coach. He also indicated that Dan DVR's EVERY MI game and watches the game during the week with his entire family. The brother (I never got his name), says that he played at a D3 school in Ohio and that he has counseled Dan on the weather and the football environment, he talked about how positive the Midwest football community and Big Ten schools are in general. He also talked with awe about kicking in the Big House (but this was his brother, I don't know how Dan feels himself).

Also, he mentioned that David Baas from Sarasota comes to games and practices often and has talked to Dan about Michigan at least once.

I have seen this kid kick in games twice. From the 40 he puts the kickoff out of the back of the endzone. He has hit a 57 yarder in a game this year and he can punt, but his coaches have restricted him to kickoffs to "protect" him from injury. He is a solid 6'3" probably about 240 maybe a little less.

On more thing...Dan has a 3.5 GPA and has a 1400ish SAT, according to his brother. He wanted to talk to me for hours...I had to cut off the conversation after 45 minutes.

I joined the gun club so I'm sure I will find out more in the coming months.

We had a guy on our flag football team this year who has the distance to nail 50 yarders though admittedly needs work on his accuracy. Nothing better than declaring kick from around the 40 yd line, the other team snickering, then him nailing said kick and the look of disbelief on the other team.

Good thing you said Riverview, FL and not Riverview, MI.........I thought a Paul Peristeris mention was coming. Guy got beat out as a kicker on the high school team, but since his family catered for M he was able to stay on as a punter.

I think the thing with these kickers is you never know until you see them under real game pressure. A lot of them will look good in a tryout or high school game but it is going to be different in a D1 game. I'm sure the guys we have now look a lot better in practice than we have seen in games. What you need is a guy with the ability, and some ice in his veins.

I heard recently that Meram is still considering coming back to football. He was discussing a 5th year of eligibility and back earlier in the fall RR said, "Justin Meram, a soccer player who was working with the football kickers, is now focusing on soccer, and Rodriguez said they have talked to him about a fifth year of eligibility and returning to football in the spring."

Good kickers don't want to come to a northern state because half the season has crappy weather that is hard to kick, let alone Michigan doesn't have a kicking coach to speak of. It seems like something the program could afford and something that would be a worthy investment to draw the top kicking recruits and add 50-75 points a season and possible 1-2 wins in close games. That still doesn't explain him going to Boise beceause the weather is even worse.

Well I know this for sure, my friend was invited back to walk on in the Spring after trying out in September when they invited students to try out. He was hitting kickoffs after only one week of training/preperation(he was coming off an MCL sprain from last spring). During his recruitment process in high school he hit 53 yarders off the ground and was a consistent kicker in high school. He was a D3 All State kicker for the state of Michigan in 2008 and 2009

Some of the best programs have had problems with their recruited kickers.

That said, it is imperative for a coach to do everything he can to make sure K, P and KO slots are filled by talented players. Our freshman punter is doing well and will, I'm certain, grow into one of the nation's best. We need to find a young kicker and develop him.

When they fire our entire defensive staff in two weeks, I think they should hire a special teams coach who is effective in training kickers. Not having someone on staff who can coach the kickers basically means that we have just let those guys just kick when they want with no pointers to improve.

Take golf, for example. If your swing is bad, it doesn't matter how many thousands of balls you hit with your bad swing. The only way to improve is to learn the correct technique and practice that. The five P's -- Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. This is a key to a succesful team in the future. ``